Marc Seriff went from startups to the Long Center staff

How often does this happen: A major charitable donor and longtime board member signs on, instead, as a member of a nonprofit group’s staff? Not as the chief, or even as a development officer, but rather as a floating observer and helper.

That’s the recent update in the amazing life of Austin native Marc Seriff, best known to the tech community as co-founder of AOL Inc., better known in certain local circles, along with his wife, Carolyn Seriff, as a fun-loving backer of the arts and other charities.

A few months ago, Jamie Grant, president and CEO of the Long Center for the Performing Arts, asked Marc Seriff to switch from the board of directors to become vice-president of special projects.

“I go to a lot of meetings,” Seriff, 67, says with an impish smile that implies he actually likes meetings. “I can ask questions. My mind thinks in different directions than theirs do. And I don’t care if I’m fired. Ultimately, that’s the most valuable thing that I do.”

Seriff grew up in Bryker Woods and Allandale. After McCallum High School, he attend MIT, then the University of Texas, earning degrees in math and electrical engineering. But like a lot of math talents, he loved the arts.

“I was one of the kids that the symphony brought down to the old Palmer Auditorium,” Seriff recalls. “I did musical theater in high school. I was lucky enough to have a high school coach who told me I was unburdened with theatrical talent. And she’s the only high school teacher whose name I remember: Margaret Dawson.”

Out of school in the 1970s and ’80s, Seriff worked for tiny tech start-ups — Telenet, Digital Music, etc. — that sound a lot like the scruffy firms portrayed on “Halt and Catch Fire,” the AMC cable series set in Dallas.

“My former colleagues and I share guesses on the real people the characters are based on,” he says. Who would Seriff be? Probably Gordon Clark, the earnest engineer played spookily well by Scott McNairy.

Among those start-ups, he helped create Digital Music, which provided the Home Music Store service, pre-Napster and iTunes.

“It had a paper catalog,” Seriff says. “You phoned in a number and downloaded Kenny Roger’s ‘The Gambler’ through a satellite. Then, through a cable, you remotely connected to your reel-to-reel and recorded the album. It was my show biz days.”

They were out of business in four months. An offshoot of that technology was used to create Control Video Corporation (CVC), which allowed users to download games, play offline and post scores nationally. Investors put up $6 million. They came out with $40,000.

The next company, Quantum Computer Service, or Q-Link, provided an online service for users of Commodore 64 computers. It later offered that service for other computer makers, including Apple and IBM.

“Eventually, all these companies didn’t want to be in the online service business,” Seriff says. “After all, only a quarter million members were online. So one by one, they either sold us the service back, or they paid us to take it away. At some point we broke down the walls between the services.”

Somebody named Steve Case won the internal naming contest for the combined service that became America Online, eventually shortened to AOL. It was the first Internet provider for the general public in the 1990s. It also grew into a behemoth.

“I don’t do big well,” Seriff says. “I got out of management in 1994 and was part of a fellows program that allowed me to float from project to project that interested me.”

In 1996, he and Carolyn — his second wife, whom me met at Telenet in Washington, D.C. — and two children from his previous marriage moved back to Austin. Retirement allowed time for volunteering, while making grants to nonprofits through a private foundation, since zeroed out.

Eventually, he chaired the board of directors for Austin Musical Theatre, which staged top-quality traditional musicals at the Paramount Theatre. “Artistically, it was a wonderful experience,” Seriff says, without having to explain that the group’s business plan did not pan out.

He also served on early boards for the Long Center, before there was physical center or even a name.

“I have a hard time working on something when there’s no there there,” he says. He returned to the board once a functioning theater complex rose on Auditorium Shores. After another eight-year tenure, in August, he retired from that position to join the staff.

Among his special projects is overseeing resident company relations, navigating among Austin’s symphony, opera, ballet and other groups.

“We’ve come along in huge ways how they get along,” Seriff says. “It wasn’t always smooth. It is much smoother now. I’ll be looking for ways to make sure we are always friends trying to solve problems.”

Nowadays, the founding resident companies control the calendar, while the Long Center proposes the rent.

“Both sides completely depend on each other,” he says. “It’s important to make sure no land mines are strewn on the path.”

He’s also committed to making the Long Center friendlier in a 24-hour way, also finding ways to utilize the popular terrace and grounds.

“When you look at that piece of land, there are so many opportunities,” he says. “I mean, we had 6,000 people watching World Cup soccer out there, and that’s just by tweeting it and putting up a screen. Lots of people come to exercise and to hang out. But there’s no place to buy a cup of coffee.”

A cafe was part of one early design for the Long Center, which was positioned as a kind of urban community center.

“The model to me is the Kennedy Center,” Seriff says of the Washington landmark. “There’s a coffee shop and a five-star restaurant on the top. That spreads out arrivals and departures, which is good for traffic and parking. And they bring in lots of revenue and help the patron experience.”

Seriff is also finding ways to monetize what the staff already does well, like offering their box office services to venues that want to outsource that function.

He and Carolyn remained involved in a dizzying array of arts groups.

“We’ve got a reputation now that our interests are not parochial for any given group,” he says. “Six years ago, people really competed against each other. They learned that to sell a ticket to anything is good for everybody. Now is the time. Almost across the board, Austin arts groups are in great shape, artistically and financially. When things are good, that’s when you can do fun stuff.”

Preservation Austin

The Merit Awards Luncheon has evolved into a powerhouse event. And Preservation Austin’s benefit has happily spilled into the wings of the Driskill Hotel‘s upper lobby. Crisp, timely and persuasive, the event included an instructive talk from Stacey L. Mickelson, who explained how Minnesota-based Artspace Projects has invested more than $582 million to create more than 1 million square feet of arts facilities and about 1,300 affordable live/work spaces for artists.

And now for the 2015 local honors: For Restoration, Austin Parks and Recreation for the Covert Monument; Rehabilitation: 1135 LLC – Dennis McDaniel and Richard Kooris for Fair Market, as well as Seaholm LLC c/o Southwest Strategies Group for the Seaholm Power Plant and Elizabeth and Nathaniel Chapin for the Yarrington-Chapin House. Winning the new Sustainability Award was Edward Tasch and Anne Crawford for Splitrock. Stewardship honors went to the Austin Theatre Alliance; Special Recognition to Blue Bonnet Hills Local Historic District Organizers and Lifetime Achievement to the amazing Lin Team.

Seton Development Board

Even people who work for Seton have a hard time explaining all its far-flung facets. The Austin health care group is all over the place, especially in the fundraising arena.

The Seton Development Board is just one group that has been backing the charity for almost 40 years. At its fall gala, I sat with radiologists and their spouses. They were a supremely social group. We talked history. We talked writing and editing. We talked medicine.

We shared in common a good friend in Dr. John Hogg, who along with partner David Garza was recently named one of the country’s 100 best party hosts by Salonniere online magazine. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised for the Seton Fund.